illustrations from the UK, especially on household income by quintile, and leave the reader to consider whether and how other advanced capitalist countries are
the same or different. The question of policy is taken up by other contributors to this special issue and our argument would be that policy should start by
recognising that our households are not up to mediating the consequences of inequality.
1. F
RAMEWORK
:
AFTER
R
OWNTREE AND
K
EYNES
The classic problem of poverty was dropped in embarrassment 30 years ago as Townsend 1970 tried to redefine poverty for an increasingly affluent society in
terms of social participation indicators such as childrens’ parties. Since then dif- ferent discourses of, and on, social exclusion have occupied the field. The time
has come for reappraisal and debate about how we can now reuse, update and modify the work of figures like Rowntree who were treated with condescension
by the last generation.
B. S. Rowntree’s 1901 first survey of household poverty in York may be antique but it is not obsolete because it focused very clearly on consumption resources
and choices in a household context; and did so in ways that can be updated and extended in the early twenty-first century. Rowntree was always concerned with
households, not individuals. His survey actually used the term family but under- stood this as a household consumption unit usually under one roof, which could
to some extent combine incomes, pool resources and save expenditure. With the rise in female workforce participation, this household perspective is more
relevant today, while his concepts of primary and secondary poverty can be updated so that they are still resonant. Through the concept of primary poverty,
Rowntree focused on those who did not have enough money to meet basic needs. Needs in 1901 were for housing and a basic diet, but in 2001 with life expectancy
of more than 70 years these needs include the ability to forego consumption and save for an unwaged old age. Through the concept of secondary poverty
Rowntree focused on the larger number whose resources were diverted from basic needs by other expenditure ‘either useful or wasteful’. In 1901 the diversion was
onto drink, in 2001 the diversion could be onto petrol for the car journey to work if there is no public transport alternative.
If Rowntree’s analysis can be updated, his field of the visible needs to be broad- ened in two respects: first, present day analysis should focus on all households,
not just low income households; second, the economic repercussions of house- hold decisions on spending and saving need to be considered. Rowntree focused
more or less exclusively on poor households and how they got by; we need to focus on richer as well as poor households if we are interested in questions
about the consequences of inequality. The broadening is necessary because the resources and choices of the non-poor have so much weight in a market
economy where incomes are unequally distributed. Consider, for example, British households by quintile: over the ten years from 1985, the growth in average
incomes in Q5 the richest 20 of households was £4550 which is almost as large as the absolute income of £4840 in Q1 the poorest 20 of households in
1995. Taking total household income growth between 1985 and 1995 after the
redistributive effects of tax and benefits, 47 was claimed by Q5, while Q1 secured only 10. Rowntree’s analysis was also limited because he was writing
as a social analyst of consumption, before Keynes in the General Theory 1937 moved economics towards consideration of the roundabout economic conse-
